The Edge Isn’t Where You Think It Is

The neurobiology of effort and the faith that extends it

Anyone who’s done a middle-distance track race knows the feeling. The final hundred meters. Form collapsing. Vision narrowing. Legs suddenly full of cement. You’re not running anymore—you’re surviving.

Runners call it “rigging up,” derived from the clinical term rigor mortis, or the postmortem stiffness that takes hold after death. Fitting, since the closing seconds of a race often feel like a controlled collapse. But what’s always intrigued me is what happens next.

Moments after crumpling to the track, that same athlete is up again, cooling down, seemingly resurrected. The body, which looked utterly broken moments before, now appears… fine.

So what’s going on?

The Flawed Theory of Failure

For decades, the dominant explanation was the “catastrophic model of fatigue.” It claimed that physical collapse in the final stages of a race was due to a biological unraveling: muscle acidosis, fuel depletion, or circulatory breakdown. In other words, the body cannot keep up.

But in 1996, South African exercise physiologist Tim Noakes challenged that view. He told the story of Josia Thugwane, who edged out South Korea’s Lee Bong-Ju to win Olympic gold in the marathon. By marathon standards, it was a photo finish. Just three seconds separated them over 26.2 miles. And yet, within minutes of crossing the line, both men were jogging side by side on a victory lap.

Josia Thugwane and Lee Bong-Ju doing their victory lap after the 1996 Olympic marathon

“Do you notice he’s not dead?” Noakes said. “What does that tell you? It means he could have run faster.”

It’s a provocative idea: that fatigue isn’t purely physical. The body doesn’t quit when it can’t go further; it quits when the brain decides it’s had enough.

Noakes continued, “What’s interesting about exercise is not that people die of heatstroke, or when climbing Everest, it’s not that one or two die. The fact is, the majority don’t die—and that’s much more interesting.”

Meet Your Inner Governor

This line of thinking gave rise to the central governor theory: the idea that the brain regulates performance not just in response to current conditions, but in anticipation of future risk. It preemptively limits effort to maintain homeostasis and avoid catastrophic failure, even if that means leaving some performance untapped.

In this model, the brain acts like a cautious coach, pacing you from within, sometimes protecting you, sometimes holding you back.

To illustrate how this works, there have been a few cleverly designed studies over the years that reveal the brain’s influence over the body.

Tricking the Brain with Taste

In a 2004 study, cyclists performed time trials under two conditions: one group rinsed their mouths with a carbohydrate solution, the other with water. The twist? Neither group swallowed the drink, so the drink never became functional fuel for the body.

The results? The carb-rinse group was nearly 3% faster despite having no actual fuel advantage. Their effort felt the same, their heart rates were unchanged, but their power output was higher.

Why? The presence of carbs in the mouth activated brain regions tied to reward and motor output, effectively “unlocking” more effort. In other words, performance was enhanced not by fueling the muscles, but by convincing the brain that more effort was safe.

When the Heat Turns Up

Another study, this one by Nybo and Nielsen in 2001, tested cyclists in both cool (18°C) and hot (40°C) conditions. When exercising in the heat, athletes didn’t fail because their muscles gave out. Despite their muscles still being capable of producing force, their ability to voluntarily activate those muscles dropped by nearly 30%.

Their legs still could produce force, but the brain wouldn’t let them. The hotter their core temperature, the more conservative the brain became. The body wasn’t in crisis yet, but the brain had seen enough.

Disabling the Governor

In a final experiment supervised by Markus Amann, cyclists were given spinal injections of fentanyl, a powerful opiate drug that blocks fatigue signals from the legs to the brain. The goal? See what happens when you sever the connection between the brain and the body so the central governor can’t receive distress calls.

What happened was striking: cyclists pushed harder early, their wattage spiked, and then their performance crashed. By disconnecting the brain from its protective feedback, they unknowingly blew through their sustainable limits, and their pacing strategy early on became completely reckless.

The takeaway? Pain and fatigue signals aren’t just noise—they’re a safeguard. While it’s easy to think of the brain as the villain, the thing preventing you from achieving your peak potential, it’s also required to help you pace effectively. Disable the feedback loop; you might crash harder, not fly farther.

The Biology of Survival

To wrap up, here’s one final study that is both haunting and illuminating.

In the 1950s, a behavioral scientist named Curt Richter conducted an ethically dubious experiment: he placed rats in a bucket of water to see how long they would tread before giving up. On average, they lasted about 15 minutes before drowning.

But then Richter did something interesting. Just before the rats drowned, he rescued them. He dried them off, let them rest, and then put them back in the water.

This time they swam for more than 60 hours. That’s not a typo. These same rats lasted 240 times longer simply because they had experienced the possibility of rescue. In Richter’s words: “After elimination of hopelessness, the rats do not die.”

They hadn’t gotten stronger. They hadn’t learned a new strategy. What changed was their expectation: they believed survival was possible.

This study could never ethically be repeated in humans. But history has echoed the same truth. Napoleon Bonaparte, who understood something about perseverance through adversity, once said: “More wars are lost due to loss of hope than loss of blood.”

I was reminded of this while reading Endurance by Alfred Lansing, which chronicles Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing survival story in the Antarctic. Shackleton’s greatest concern wasn’t the subzero temperatures or the lack of food. It was despair. “Of all their enemies—the cold, the ice, the sea—he feared none more than demoralization… No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.”

When the physical resources are exhausted, hope is the last frontier.

The Last Frontier

When most runners learn about the central governor theory, they focus on hacking it. Yes, pacing strategies, fueling protocols, and environmental conditioning can help you negotiate with your brain’s cautious circuitry.

But what’s often overlooked is that belief—intangible and unmeasurable—is the most powerful lever of all.

The central governor isn’t just a barrier; it’s also a gateway. It protects you from breakdown, but it also restricts access to reserves you haven’t yet earned permission to use. And the key to that permission might be something you can summon anytime: hope.

It doesn’t come from scientific data or splits. It comes from the deep, almost unreasonable trust that the pain has a purpose, and that it’s carrying you somewhere worth going.

As Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, wrote:

“Anyone who has been seriously engaged in a scientific work of any sort realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.”

Science is not only about cold logic or measurement—it also rests on a deep, almost spiritual trust in the path forward.

That’s why process-oriented athletes outlast outcome-obsessed ones. Because they remain optimistic even when the scoreboard doesn’t validate them, because their belief isn’t outsourced to external validation, it’s internal.

So when you reach the edge, when your brain starts whispering that you’ve done enough, remember: it’s not just about surviving the discomfort. It’s about believing that something more is possible on the other side of it.

That’s how you rewire the central governor, day after day. That’s how you finish the race.

If this made you think bigger, imagine what it could do for someone else? Share The Run Down and help ignite belief where doubt used to live. One share could spark a new starting line.